Subject: RFC Editor Letter of Intent

From: IETF Administrative Director <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2006 20:46:04 -0500

The IAOC is pleased to announce that it has signed a Letter of Intent with
the University of Southern California to negotiate an agreement for the
Information Sciences Institute to undertake a new term as the RFC Editor.
Assuming an agreement on contract terms and conditions can be reached, the
contract would begin on January 1, 2007 and run for two years, with an
option for an additional year.

As you may recall the IAOC received three bids in response to the RFP let
in July.  The IAOC thoroughly reviewed the competing proposals, including
teleconference meetings with all the respondants, evaluation of responses
to skills demonstrations, consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of
the respondents in terms of the many tasks laid out in the RFP's SoW, and
pricing.

The IAOC started this process seeking to ensure consistent and
professional support for the continuation of the RFC series publication,
to support the IAB's goal for improved community involvement in the RFC
series direction as described in draft-iab-rfc-editor, and a more
efficient, less costly operation.

The IAOC has determined the best path forward to achieve a balance of
those goals is to proceed with ISI for RFC Editor services, except for
copyediting services, which will be managed by IASA in a separate
contract(s).

In 2006 the RFC Editor turned the corner on performance - eliminating the
backlog, improving processing times and delivering record setting
production of RFCs.   Based on ISI's thoughtful and constructive response
to the competitive RFP, we are anticipating an important change in the
trend of costs, as well, with an improvement in 2007 over 2006, and a
larger reduction of costs in 2008. 

After briefing the IAB, as part of the IAB's RFC Editor oversight role,
and obtaining their support for this direction, the IAOC has engaged in
further negotiations with ISI and relevant copy-editing contractors. 

It is anticipated that contracts will be executed in early December.

It is the IAOC's understanding and expectation that the IAB will complete
draft-iab-rfc-editor and commit to the model of engagement with the RFC
Editor and Internet community outlined in it.  In particular, the IAOC
would like the IAB, RFC Editor and the community to work together to
clearly document the component pieces of the RFC series support (e.g.,
possibly separating the RFC Editor and RFC Publisher functions) so that
the IAOC can more effectively compete appropriate task groups
independently at the end of this contract term.

Ray Pelletier
IAD